the store is fairly limited in what is available. say they double or triple the items available, how much more would they be able to make?

is there a delicate balance in releasing store items over time, or all at once? i am sure they have people mathing it all out. blizz min/maxing profits like we min/max stats. ironic almost.

I don't think it's in their interest to flood the shop with stuff. What they'll want to do is try and slowly ramp it up as their subscription revenues drop. Steady cashflow is the name of the game. Huge profits one year, followed by 50% reduction in the next is generally not a good business strategy to instill investor confidence.

Why should they go F2P and suffer the quality loss just because they make good money from services, pets, and mounts? That's like saying to someone that once they reach a certain level of income they should stop getting paid.

I don't understand why people equate F2P to lesser quality games when there are plenty of really good F2P games on the market, and if they make more money as a micro transaction game they could invest more into their game.

WoW releases one raid every 6-12 months and people are worried about quality loss at going free to play. That is amazing to me. It can't get any worse quality-wise than it is now and you're paying 15/month.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the level of addiction and completely blind, mindless Blizzard defence on these forums is equal to some of the worst drug addicted people I have met in my life.

You're not attacking them ergo I can't be defending them. Blizzard will continue to make money or not regardless of what our opinions are. You seem to have an inflated sense of your opinion's importance. Just because I disagree with you on the correct course of action the company should take does not make me a "Blizzard defender."

Originally Posted by CandyCotton Marshmallows

People need to get over the gear color (and themselves). It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter what other players have either. Worry about your damn self. Live your life by that. If you want to concern yourself with someone else, then worry about HELPING them, not putting them down or making sure you stand out as better than them.

Maybe the game would be better with more low DPS nice guys and fewer high DPS jerks? -- Ghostcrawler, Twitter, 6/29/13

You're not attacking them ergo I can't be defending them. Blizzard will continue to make money or not regardless of what our opinions are. You seem to have an inflated sense of your opinion's importance. Just because I disagree with you on the correct course of action the company should take does not make me a "Blizzard defender."

Regardless of 'our' opinions, yes. But your opinion actually matters. If content wow players wanted the original genre back they'd lose a lot of money. Never going to happen though.

The first mount they put in their web store generated 2 million dollars in the first two hours. Those costs are nothing compared to what they make. Stop being so naive...

The comment I was responding to indicated that server changes, race changes, and name changes don't cost Blizzard a dime and are therefore pure profit. It said nothing about their in-game store, nor did I mean to imply that microtransactions aren't profitable. There's a difference between costs being relatively small and costs being non-existent. Mounts are far less intrusive than any of their services because the code to enable mounts or pets is exercised every single day by a significant portion of the player population. You don't need an extra computer to manage those because it's as simple as updating a single field in a player database. The Blizzard store is also an extension of the existing battle.net account management infrastructure. Neither of those things can be said for those paid services that I was talking about. If you're going to dismiss my statements as naive please don't change the context in which they were made.

Last edited by Ronduwil; 2014-01-22 at 06:07 PM.

Originally Posted by CandyCotton Marshmallows

People need to get over the gear color (and themselves). It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter what other players have either. Worry about your damn self. Live your life by that. If you want to concern yourself with someone else, then worry about HELPING them, not putting them down or making sure you stand out as better than them.

Maybe the game would be better with more low DPS nice guys and fewer high DPS jerks? -- Ghostcrawler, Twitter, 6/29/13

(1) Revenues from online subscriptions consist of revenues from all World of Warcraft products, including subscriptions, boxed products, expansion packs, licensing royalties, value-added services, and revenues from Call of Duty Elite memberships.

Pretty much, yes. Subscriptions pay out almost as much in only three months as microtransactions are making for the entire year. To be fair, though, that figure includes "value-added services," so it includes microtransactions, but still. At only 213 million for the year, we can estimate just under $54 million in microtransactions over three months. That's only 26% of their revenue. Is it really wise to throw away the other 74%? Is the population of players too cheap to shell out $12 per month for a subscription really going to compensate for that by shelling out $5 apiece for yet another freaking pet or mount?

Originally Posted by CandyCotton Marshmallows

People need to get over the gear color (and themselves). It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter what other players have either. Worry about your damn self. Live your life by that. If you want to concern yourself with someone else, then worry about HELPING them, not putting them down or making sure you stand out as better than them.

Maybe the game would be better with more low DPS nice guys and fewer high DPS jerks? -- Ghostcrawler, Twitter, 6/29/13

So subscriptions are probably about 50-60 million a month. If WoW went F2P with 10 million active players, each person would have to spend on average $5-6 per month for Blizzard to make the same amount of money.

I don't understand why people equate F2P to lesser quality games when there are plenty of really good F2P games on the market, and if they make more money as a micro transaction game they could invest more into their game.

and something something cataclysm sucked

It does seem fairly biased especially when players point to the games that didnt do well even when they had a sub like that silly thread on the official forums. In other words lets take a game that was shit when it was sub based and still is shit after and claim that any good sub based game will turn to shit if it went F2P. It is an apples and oranges case while also ignoring what F2P games have done successfully and just focusing on the hated aspects that isnt true with all F2P games especially a number of successful ones where players dont complain about the micro transactions.

From a numbers stand point we also dont know what would happen if Blizzard changed the subscription to a premium membership. Also as some others have pointed out the store is fairly limited compared to the typical microtransaction store that is solely cosmetic.

I am not totally for F2P, but some of the hatred towards it is ether fairly narrow minded or just lacks explanation of why a subscription based game is preferred over say paying for cosmetics.

They make 213 million from MT alone yet they hide behind the excuse of "We cant hire more artists" when content comes out at a snails pace. Credit to Blizzard for creating an empire so strong that they can rob their customers blind and get away with it.